New Dating App Siren Puts Women in Control

For the single women reading, how many lewd messages have you received on OkCupid in the past month? How many guys have stalked you over Tinder? If you answer “too many” for either one, you might be ready for a new kind of dating app called Siren.

Siren is an alternative to the typical dating apps like Tinder, where many men swipe right to have more women in their cue - meaning, they play the numbers. They make the first move, often approaching women in a way that makes them feel pressured, uncomfortable, or just plain creeped out. It’s become a kind of risky game for some women, where they aren’t sure if they will meet someone and feel safe. If they don’t, the whole dating app experience becomes tainted.

This has become a bit of a problem. The 2013 Pew Research online dating report found that 28% of online daters have been contacted "in a way that made them feel harassed or uncomfortable," with 42% of female online daters experiencing this, compared with only 17% of men.

CEO Susie Lee and design director Katrina Hess created Siren based on the core principle that "women needed to control visibility."

Siren is a dating app that gives women all the power. They are following in the footsteps of apps like Hinge, which caters to females by making its app invite-only through mutual Facebook friends, and LuLu, which offers a ratings system so women can feel safer about the men they meet. With Siren however, women have to make the first move, giving them control of the online dating experience and hopefully avoiding those lewd remarks from strangers. Women have the ability to view men’s profiles, ask questions and see who responds to their liking, and hide their own profiles from unwanted suitors.

Here’s how it works: When a user signs up, they are prompted to take an in-app photo so you can’t post an old or fake picture from your phone. Then the user is prompted with an open-ended “question of the day.” The female users will see all the men who responded that day, and if a woman likes a response, she can choose to either make herself visible to him or save his profile to check out his future responses. As Lee told CNN, “this gives a more complete, up-to-date personality portrait of a user than the typical profile list of likes and dislikes.”

The men’s experience is a little different. They will see a woman’s answers without seeing her profile picture. If he’s interested, he can notify Siren, but the woman has to decide whether or not to make herself visible. (An added perk for women---you can send out a “Siren” call that notifies matches that you want to grab a drink or meet up right now, so you have the option to use the app in that way, too.)

Siren has launched in Seattle, and plans to go nationwide soon.